Good news for Northeast Florida’s manatees: The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens plans to build a critical-care center designed just for the endangered aquatic mammals.

After the worst year on record for manatees, that’s an important development, said Katie Tripp, director of science and conservation at Save the Manatees.

“We’re very excited about it,” she said. “It’s filling a major gap.”

The center will be just the fourth in the state, and will save sick manatees — and their human rescuers — a long trip to SeaWorld in Orlando or even further to the zoo in Tampa.

That’s not just a matter of convenience. Instead it could mean the difference between life or death, said Dan Maloney, deputy director of conservation and education at the zoo,

“If you have an animal that’s already compromised, pulled out of the water, asked to sit in a truck, a truck that’s going to be sitting in traffic, and you have to get that animal to a place where, at best, it’s going to be three hours until it’s back in the water — that’s rough.”

Maloney said the zoo hopes to open its care center for manatees late this year or early next year. The $1.5 million project is part of the zoo’s capital improvements tied in with its 100th anniversary, alongside a new $9.5 million Land of the Tigers exhibit.

The manatee care center, however, won’t be a regular exhibit for zoo visitors, though an occasional group or school field trip could get a peek inside.

“It’s a fairly modest facility. It’s functional. It’s not designed as a public display,” he said.

It will have pools for the manatees with floors that can be raised or lowered for treatment. Most of the costs are for a life-support system that will keep the water filtered, treated and heated — manatees in a confined space can be pretty messy.

The zoo already has a response team for manatee rescues, made up of a core group of about 25 people from various departments at the zoo.

They help the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which is called in when a manatee is in trouble.

Once healed, the manatees are returned to the wild, preferably to the spot where they were found, said Nadia Gordon, a marine mammal research biologist with the FWC in Jacksonville.

Last year, a record 829 manatees died in Florida, most of those from an algae bloom and food shortage. That represented about one-sixth of the manatees estimated to live in Florida. Statewide, 89 manatees were rescued in 2013.

The FWC asks the public to call the agency’s hotline at 888-404-3922 if a sick or injured manatee is found.

Gordon said that most years FWC rescue teams devote much of their time to manatees. Last year there were 71 dead manatees and 20 rescues in Northeast Florida.

Lately, though, the focus has shifted to bottlenose dolphins, which have been hit hard by a virus similar to measles in humans. The last outbreak happened 26 years ago and killed more than 700 dolphins.

This outbreak has already killed more than 1,000. It was spotted off New York in July and has moved south with migrating dolphins.

The first victim in Northeast Florida washed up on the beach Oct. 18; before the year was out, 61 dolphin deaths were attributed to the virus.

It’s continuing, Gordon said: On Friday another dolphin was found dead on the beach north of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville. It was the fourth this year in Northeast Florida.